I once postulated that Western society was stuck in a cycle of post traumatic stress disorder-induced abuse dating back to at least World War One. Nearly a whole generation of European men were either killed or injured in that four year period. My father's father was a medic in the British army and in 1917 was caught in a mustard gas attack. As a medic, he would have had to retrieve the dead and dying from the battle field and seen horrors enough to freeze a soul. After the war he drifted around the world for ten years before settling in Brazil where he met my grandmother and my father was born. They immigrated to Canada in 1931, and my grandfather never worked another day from then until his death in 1978.
He physically and emotionally abused my father, and in turn my father physically and sexually abused me. I was a drug addict and alcoholic by the time I was thirteen and didn't stop until I was thirty-three. It was then that I started to recover the memories of being abused as a young child and began the long process of recovery. I'm still in therapy, digging out the deep planted seeds abuse planted that governed my behaviour for most of my life. One way or another though, the cycle of abuse in my family has stopped with me.
On June 11th 2008, the Prime Minister of Canada, Steven Harper, is going to stand up in the House of Commons to officially apologize to Native Canadians for the residential school system. For close to a hundred years, the government of Canada sponsored church run schools that stole Native children away from their parents. Aside from the shock of being stolen from their parents, they were also forbidden to speak their own languages, and taught that all they believed in was evil. If that wasn't bad enough, at a minimum, 50% of all children who attended these schools were either sexually or physically abused, if not both, by the staff.
What I'm most interested in knowing is who exactly the Prime Minister is going to be apologizing to and what he is going to be apologizing for? With the first residential school opening in the 1870s and the last one closing in the 1970s we can be sure that not everybody who went to one is still alive. Is he going to stand up in the House of Commons and say on behalf of the Canadian government we're sorry that previous governments oversaw attempted cultural genocide, allowed hundreds of thousands of children to be sexually and physically abused, and successfully tore the heart out of Native communities across Canada for subsequent generations?
Article comments
1 - Doug Hunter
You poor, poor helpless victim my heart bleeds for you. I agree completely that the world was utopia before those insidious white devils ruined it for everyone with their cursed 'science' and 'civilization'. How dare they try and educate the savages!
I realize that you have zero control over your own situation, attitude, or mental health and are only a product of your terribly unfortunate underpriviledged upbringing but could you please refrain a bit from dragging the rest of us down with your incessant whining?
2 - El Bicho
Well, Doug, you seem to have zero control over being an insensitive jackass whose whining no one finds uplifting, so you really aren't in a position to judge.
3 - Doug Hunter
Thanks EB! Glad I could spark something in you.
4 - bliffle
Doug,
You poor, poor helpless victim my heart bleeds for you. I agree completely that the world was utopia before those insidious red devils ruined it for everyone with their cursed complaints about 'science' and 'civilization'. How dare they try and educate the whites!
etc., etc.
5 - Doug Hunter
Blif,
I must have missed the part where I blamed all my current problems on my Indian grandmother and then whined because modern politicians don't show enough white guilt. Oh yeah, that's because I forgot to include it because I don't think like that.
I'm not a victim, no one owes me anything based on their sharing the same skin tone as someone who in the past may have oppressed one of my ancestors.
6 - Cindy D
Doug,
You know that joke where the guy says I'd rather have a bottle in front of me...?
Did you by any chance go with the other choice?
7 - Cindy D
Thank you for the excellent article Richard.
I just came across those figures yesterday when I was reading about Canada's native population. They have much in common with the Australian natives.
Unfortunately, most people embrace that same disconnection between past and present that is exemplified by Doug. Albeit, not necessarily with such vileness.
8 - bliffle
It isn't just the cruelties we visited upon native peoples by scorning their lives and cultures, it's also what we deprived ourselves and our children of with such hasty judgement.
9 - Cindy D
Look on the bright side, bliffle, our children will probably be too busy entertaining themselves or shopping to notice that they missed anything. And they will always have a McDonalds close at hand. If they do notice something missing, they will at least have a great variety of antidepressants to choose from.
10 - Rosanna Deerchild
Interesting column Mr. Marcus,
The following 'comments' do not surprise me at all.
Unfortunatly, most Canadians are either ignorant of their own history or are in complete denial about Canada's continued genocidal practices.
In fact I am postive this comment will illicit responses of 'get over it' or 'its not my fault' or some such idiotic sentiment.
Further, I want to point out a factual error in your piece.
The last residential school closed in 1996 - only 12 years ago.
These crimes (kidnapping, forcible confinement, cultural genocide, sexual assault, physical assault and child endangerment to name a few) happened within the past 20 years.
As child of a residential school survivor I can tell you that if my mother could just 'get over it' she would.
As Indian people, we would all like to heal and move on from what was a devestating part of our collective experience.
But first there must be a willingness for people to hear the truth about what happened in those schools and yes an apolgy must be made.
It's too bad our fellow Canadians don't want that. They just want to continue misplacing the blame and stick their heads in the sand hoping it it will go away.
11 - Richard Marcus
Ms. Dearchild
Thank you for your comments, and for the fact correction - I was repeating the informatin that was given in the newspaper article about the residential schools - which had said the last one closed its doors in 1976 - and I know there were ones still open in Ontario during that time - Do you know where the last one was located?
Thanks again
Richard Marcus
12 - Therese Crookedhand Baxter Harmon
Okay I have read a lot about the IRS survivors getting an apology(which is great,I have the date marked)but what about us..the 60s scoop survivors? are we not entitled to an apology too?My life was not all peaches an cream in that white family I lost out on my bio family who I just found so are we going to get one to..anyone know?